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Friday, September 30, 2005

The Raven X41 Linux Tablet PC

Linux has matured greatly on the desktop, but it’s still mostly an also-ran in the laptop space, mainly due to that crazy specialized hardware that manufactures put into their portables—like batteries. The Tablet PC brings a whole ‘nother batch of features to support, including portrait to landscape view switching, pen based input, and the mother of them all; handwriting recognition. The RavenX41 by EmperorLinux, based on the Lenovo Thinkpad X41, is a—you guessed it—Linux based Tablet PC with support for all of the above features, along with full utilization of the Thinkpad’s biometric fingerprint scanner.

The Tablet PC in action today

Today was a wild day – ticket cancelations, rebooking of tickets, order pathology slides, etc.

Thought you might see how the Tablet PC played it self out today in such a practical way.

Situation: all I had was my tablet pc – no printer, no fax machine, and three kids. I only had a couple of hours to get this done so the fed ex would go out today.

Maggie’s neurologist requested that we get her pathology report and tissue samples fed ex’d from Denver to St. Louis. So I called Denver and they faxed the authorization form to me to my eFax number, which then got E-mailed to me.

I opened it up and printed it to my pdf printer and then opened it up in PDF Annotator. I filled it out using PDF Annotator, saved the PDF, and then using the eFax software, faxed the document back to them– filled out and signed.

What would have happened had I not had the Tablet PC? I would have gotten in my car, run to my office (with kids in tow), printed the document out, filled it out in regular pen / paper, scanned it, and faxed it using the efax software.

Are you ready for a God Moment?

One of the readers of my blog ( robbushway.blogspot.com ) is at the same neurology conference that Maggie’s doctor’s from St. Louis Children’s Hospital are at. They got to talking about Maggie and my reader gave them my blog address. The neurologist who will be over Maggie’s case started reading the updates on how bad things have been this week and sent me an email late last night. He was very concerned about what he was reading and how things were getting worse. We talked this morning and they have arranged for Maggie to be admitted to St. Louis Children’s Hospital this Monday morning instead of next Monday.

We will either be flying out on Saturday or Sunday.

Don’t ever doubt the Goodness of God, His Mercies, and His never-ending love for you! He has answered our prayers from some of the darkest moments this week and He is providing at the very moment we needed to hear from Him.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Maggie's status as of 9/29

Maggie had one of the worst nights with seizures that I can remember. The ramifications of cancer are far reaching. After her seizures passed last night, Maggie and I sang hymns together until she finally dropped off to sleep at 11:30pm. Her favorites: Amazing Grace, It is well with my soul, This is my Father’s World, and A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Maggie has a lot of the words memorized from choir camp last year, and it is indeed such sweet music to listen to her sing.

They are moving her to Pediatrics ICU and will start a vercet (sp?) drip and treat her with general anesthesia should the vercet drip not work. She is still on a feeding bag, unable to eat much at all. She has several hours of really good moments and then they start back again.

At this point, it would not surprise me if Maggie stays in the hospital until we leave for St. Louis on 10/8. If that is case, Maggie will have spent about a solid month in the hospital.

Kathi and I are beyond exhausted. I can’t really describe how tired we feel and we have 3 more weeks to go with 2 more weeks of hospital.

At times, it feels like God is giving us much more than we can handle, but I know His Word says otherwise and its’ that that I need to trust.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

OneNote 12 - Working as a team with shared notebooks

Recently I've had some mail from various OneNote users telling me that they are using OneNote for team work - shared sections and folders of notes which every member of the team can read and contribute to, and of course search. I've also been reading blogs like this one. I like this post because sbreck describes exactly the type of scenario we are targeting OneNote 12 at. Of course, he is trying to do it with OneNote 2003, so he has a few issues. It works, but it runs into limits. OneNote 12 has had significant work done to make it a breeze to work in small to medium groups effectively and quickly. Allow me to drone on….

Weis honors dying boy by using his called play - Notre Dame Central - MSNBC.com

Eric Mack on notetaking

Eric is looking for an interesting note taking application – or a possible integration into either OneNote or GoBinder. I think he has some interesting requirements. I’ve got a couple of developers in mind who might be able to accomplish this. What do you think?

I'm looking for an application that will allow me to highlight, organize, and retrieve specific selections of text - based not on what I write, but on what I highlight.

Many note-taking programs for the Tablet PC, such as OneNote or GoBinder, will allow me to highlight text in a variety of colors. Acrobat even allows this, though with a limited interface. I want to do more ... It's the retrieval part that is most important to me. I want to search and retrieve, not by text, but by the color of what I've highlighted.

The feature that I've been unable to find (or have missed) so far is the ability to ask the note-taking software to organize or show me all of my blue highlights or all of my yellow highlights.

In summary, I want the ability to:

bring in documents into the program (PDF or Scan or Import)

highlight text, using a pen, in a minimum of 6 color shades, ideally in a pallette

retrieve, access, or organize that text on the basis of the highlighted color.

A quick update from the hospital

Well, its’ been a very rough couple of days for Maggie while in the hospital. They have not been able to control her seizures.Maggie misses home greatly. No idea yet on when she will be coming home. The goal right now is to get and keep Maggie stable until we can get to St Louis. Her seizures are showing themselves in a much more visible manner now.

An MRI was done and it came back with a small questionable lesion / tumor where the old tumor bed was and about the same size as the original tumor. The MRI can’t differentiate whether it is scar tissue or tumor. We won’t know until we get to St Louis and the invasive monitoring is done, and a heavy duty MRI is done. This questionable lesion is in a very difficult part of the brain, so its’ not known what can be done surgically. With the temporal lobe now gone, they will be able to get a clearer picture of where the rest of her seizures are originating from. For right now, that lesion is looking like the most likely culprit for Maggie’s remaining seizures.

I was scheduled to attend the Microsoft MVP Summit this week I’ve canceled those plans.

We’re going to fight this with everything we have and will continue to pray that God would heal Maggie – whatever that might look like. I don’t pretend to understand what He is doing and why He is allowing Maggie’s suffering to continue on; but, He remains in total control of a situation that feels totally out of control to me.

One of the biggest things that God has taught me these past two years is that most of our life cannot be wrapped up in a nice little box. Pain and suffering is not very pretty. It brings out emotions and changes of lifestyles that most people do not like to acknowledge. We all desire for things to be wrapped up in a timely fashion so it can be put away and pulled out when needed. God doesn’t work like that. God will allow suffering to continue until His purposes are accomplished. God may not choose to heal Maggie in this lifetime. As of now, I’m not ok with that. But God is changing my heart to be in tune with His.

God also uses pain and suffering to bring out the best in people and we have seen that so evident in our lives. We have been so cared for that it would take me volumes to write about.Thank you.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Good news on the LE1600 front

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the hospital with Maggie, getting a little bit of work done while she is sleeping recovering from 2 days of solid seizures.

I let my LE1600 Tablet PC dry out this afternoon after it enjoyed a glass of dark roast caffinated coffee. Just for grins, I decided to power up my LE1600 Tablet PC.

No more screen flickers and all the hardware buttons are now working. So far, it looks like it has recovered. I’m going to keep an eye on it, but for right now, I’m going to take it with me to Redmond (if Maggie gets out of the hospital on Monday and is doing ok – otherwise I’ll be staying home).

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Owen Braun: OneNote 12

Here is another OneNote team member blog to read regularly: Owen Braun. He’s got screen shots, too! As the OneNote team slowly leaks out the feature set, its’ looking like a must-have app for notetakers, especially the tablet pc notetakers among us.

Owen talks about the new multi-notebook feature of OneNote 12. That is a great new feature. Thanks for the link, Warner.

Here is a sneak peak of his next entry: Next up... linking related notes together.

ahh...linking related notes together. You are going to love it!

One interesting request we've heard with some frequency is support for multiple notebooks (instead of having just one big notebook with structure inside it). This turns out to be one of those requests which, when made of a normal person, causes them to give a normal response (i.e., “OK”), but when made of product designers who have been obsessing over the design for several years, causes them to ask alarming questions about What You Are Really Trying To Accomplish. Which we did for a little while, because we weren’t sure whether this was a functional thing (i.e., “I can’t do X because I need feature Y”) or a concept thing (“I can do X but OneNote’s way is weird”). If you squinted, top-level folders within your notebook were similar to having multiple notebooks. And if we added support for multiple notebooks, would they in turn be contained inside some other new, top-level thing that you took with you? (What do you call a group of notebooks, anyway? "Shelf" or "Filing Cabinet" might be the obvious choices, but I'm sort of partial to "squadron", a word which, based on its sheer oddness, deserves greater usage outside military contexts IMO.)

A major "Oh No!" moment

I was sitting with Maggie this morning helping her get through some big seizures. I had set my cup of coffee dow next to my LE1600 tablet pc.

After awhile, the phone rang and I got up to get it, accidentally knocking over my cup of coffee. I stayed on the phone for about 10 minutes. I didn’t realize until I got off the phone that I spilled the coffee directly on my tablet pc.

After recovering from my heart attack, I dried as much out as I could, turned it on and the screen is now constantly flicking on and off – not good.

off to Motion it goes. Unfortunately, I’m headed out of town on Tuesday to the MVP Summit in Redmond – with no tablet pc. I’m glad I have my backup Thinkpad laptop.

bestkungfu weblog � My Tablet PC coming-out story

I love these kind of blog entries – people who use the Macintosh and switch to the tablet pc – it really shows that Apple needs to seriously launch that iTablet that is constantly being talked about.

Those of you who saw me at the Podcast Hotel yesterday may have noticed something different. Hopefully it wasn’t the thinning hair, but rather the little piece of technology I was scribbling furiously into during the session.Yes, I’m Matt May, and for the last six days I’ve been a Tablet PC user.

…

Here was my oh-my-god moment with the tablet: I had to send a form off to a client the other day, so I took the fax I received in PDF format from my fax-to-email gateway, opened it up in PDF Annotator, wrote my information directly onto the form, saved it, and sent it back. Without the tablet, that process goes print, scribble, scan, email, or print, scribble, walk to Kinko’s. That was so sweet. I really can’t wait to do some design work directly to the screen. It’s that much fun.

I really loved this part. I have to agree. The M200 is walking billboard. I remove basically everything except the stickers on the back when I buy a new system.

(Sidebar: the M200 is excessively stickerized. When I took it out of the box, it had stickers for: where to buy accessories; where to buy support; Windows XP; Centrino; nVidia G-Force FX; Wacom; EnergyStar; the XP license key; wireless MAC address; Ethernet MAC address; a Chinese QA approval; two for standards compliance; a battery-recycling warning; an excessive heat warning; two to denote that it’s reconditioned; one that shows the specs; and one warning me not to turn the display in the wrong direction. Too much noise. I’m stripping them one by one.)

TEO 3.0 feature list

Josh posts a list of the improvements coming to TEO 3.0 for the Tablet PC:

Oh…and he also says that if you buy TEO 2.0 now, the upgrade to TEO 3.0 will be free (an official announcement to come).

Improvements- Larger, more comfortable input controls with visible rule lines, focus indication, full keyboard support, and improved recognition.- Much better correction interface with ability to correct recognition while preserving ink.- Background incremental recognition and Outlook data binding for much faster saving.- Full featured note taking with support for mixes of ink, text, shapes, images, and flags.- Windows Journal import capability.- Outlook attachments and contact links supported from within the TEO window.- Many more Outlook fields supported. Almost all fields supported.- Durations and abbreviations supported in ink. Writing things like "1 d" or "2 hours" supported in duration fields.- Tab position can be top, bottom, left, or right.- Notes bug fixed!- Appointment label supported.

New Features- Information bar allows special messages and context sensitive tips to be shown at the top of the window.- Integration with Virtual Earth for mapping support without MapPoint.- Integrated telephony features such as click to call and auto call journaling and conference calling.- Integrated voice recording and playback.- Background lookups in Wikipedia and other reference databases.- Improved reminders dialog with ink support and text to speech option.- Recurring appointments and tasks supported.- Ability to choose the handwriting recognizer language on a per item basis.- Option to warn when saving an item without a category.- Contact images and business card images (from a CardScan device) displayed in the form.- Layout manager provides optimized layouts for various resolutions and orientations.

Chris_Pratley's OneNote WebLog : More OneNote 12 Goodness

I thought I would discuss a few new capabilities of "OneNote 12" that I think many current users are dying to see appear. Certainly each of these has appeared many times in our newsgroups and in our suggestion lists in the OneNote community site. Remember that "OneNote 12" is a codename, and we use 12 because we share code with Office and Office is on version "12". Of course this is by no means an exhaustive list - there's plenty more to come!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

jkOnTheRun: Following Rita

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

buzznovation: ActiveWords InkPad for the Tablet PC

ActiveWords InkPad 1.5 is now available! I’ve been beta testing this for quite some time and I really cannot imagine not using the combination of ActiveWords and InkPad on my Tablet PC. The two go to together so well. InkPad 1.5 is free to enterprise and plus users of ActiveWords.

Here is a good tip for you: use the inkpad undocked and move it to the top of your menu bar. Use the handles to resize the inkpad icon. I have mine set to activative on tap, not hover. The hover mode is too distracting.

So, no more stealthmode as they say! We are rolling out the newest piece of ActiveWords technology this week.This press release lets the world know what we have been working on!I am on stage tomorrow at Demo, hopefully will dazzle everyone. But the Inkpad rocks, and changes forever how you use a tablet.If you want to try it, let me know!

Monday, September 19, 2005

Articles - Pen functionality in Windows Vista build...

Personally, I’m really enjoying the new handwriting recognition wizard. It greatly improved some common mistakes with words and letters. i’m really loving the slide out TIP.

The new flicker / gesture settings are pretty cool. however, the up and down flickers are backwards – you have flick up to move the page down – which is a different movement than working with the scroll bar.

I’d love to see the start button as a half circle, similar to Alias Sketchbook.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Marc and James do a great job with this weeks Tablet PC Show Podcast featuring Mike Jetter, the founder and CTO of Mindjet.

I’ve been using the beta version and MindManager for the past month or so and it is going to be well worth the $129 upgrade. The ability to take ink notes in the notepad section is a great improvement for Tablet PC users. The eraser support is still there with the right click – I wish they would have added support for the the back of the pen.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2: Lots Of Tablet PC News This Week

There was lots of exciting Tablet PC news coming out of PDC this week regarding Vista and Office 12. The fact that the Tablet Input system (pen and ink?) is viewed as radical by the big guy kicked the week off for me in such a way that my irony detector is still wobbling a bit.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Is ultra mobile really all that it is made out to be?

I’m treading on sacred ground here, so forgive me if I tread lightly.

for the past week, I’ve been playing with a ThinkPad T42, 1.86ghz, 15” screen (1600 x 1200 resolution), 128mb dedicated video card, has an extended battery. Its’ got a removable cd drive that can also provide extra battery life. I’ve just got the first extended battery which gives me about 5 – 6 hours of battery life. It weighs about 6lbs.

I’ve got my LE1600 slate tablet (1.5ghz, 1024 x 768 resolution) with the convertible keyboard and the extended battery. I get about 5.5 hours of life on that battery – really good. Weight: about 4 lbs with the convertible keyboard attached to the front.

As I’ve used the ThinkPad this week, here is what life has been like:

Going mobile: fold it up and through it in my back pack.Full size Keyboard is there, cd rom is there, extra battery life is there.

At the desk: take it out of the backpack, plug in ac adapter, get to work. If I need to install something, cd rom is already there. Great resolution, no need for external monitor. Great keyboard and mouse. Occassionally, I’ll use my bluetooth mouse if I tire of the trackpoint or trackpad. Now…none of this is unique to the ThinkPad. The above can apply with a Toshiba M4 or Gateway or Acer. I’m just using the ThinkPad as an example.

Life with the slate:

Going mobile: take out of docking station and attach the convertible keyboard to the front, throw it in back pack. Extended battery life is there – no problem – could be an all day excursion. Pack my bump case because I might need it as well. Ask myself? will I need my cd rom? No Don’t take it. Get to client. Ask myself, do I need the keyboard or can I just go in and take notes? (I can’t attach the keyboard to the back of the unit for those “just in case” moments. Leave the keyboard, won’t be doing any programming. Go inside, take notes, client needs some work done. Go back outside and get keyboard. question: what if I would have left the keyboard at the office? hmm. Life got interesting a couple of weeks ago as I was with my convertible keyboard for two weeks. What did I do? When I was at home working I propped up the tablet on the desktop stand (something I had to remember to take with me), and used a full size keyboard and mouse on my dining room table. When I was a clients, I brought along the desktop stand and the USB keyboard.

Get back to desk – plug in to docking station for full keyboard and mouse support, and external monitor – 1024 x 768. need to install something? pull out cd rom. plug into front of usb drive (back ones are used) – do the install, put up in gadget drawer.

Now: what do I prefer taking notes with? a slate just like the LE1600 of course. However, going mobile is big hassel with a slate, even though its’ built for the mobile professional. There is just too much to remember to bring with you for those “just in case” issues.

All in all, the headaches of the questions about what to take with me and bring along devices “just in case” really beg the question: are the two pounds in weight difference really worth it? I’m not totally sure. Life could be simpler with just a convertible tablet.

no real decisions here – just thinking through these issues.

Here is another thing I’ve noticed – I’ve got the same applications installed on both machines – 1 a tablet pc and 1 a regular laptop. I’m constantly in the 700 – 800mb range for ram being utilized on the slate tablet pc. On the laptop: I very rarely go above 450mb of RAM being. Both have the same tweaks, etc. Interesting.

Handwriting recognition training coming to Visita

Back in February, I reported on the ‘buzz that one of the Tablet PC Team members told the audience in a breakout session that handwriting recognition training would be coming for the tablet pc. According to ZDNet, it looks like that info was right and its’ coming (via Dennis on TabletPCBuzz.com)

In my opinion, this is one of the best things MSFT has done for the tablet os since coming out with SP2. It will help so much with recognition errors.

Shelter For Katrina Victims

Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham is challenging U.S. congregations to open their doors to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“In looking at this problem, I think the churches of America can step up to the plate. If every church in the Southeast took in 10 families, this would put a big dent in this problem," Mr. Graham said in an interview on national television.

One of the long term visions for OneNote is to bring together "your information" and make it findable and reusable, regardless of format. When we look at the types of info we try to help people organize, it is obvious that a lot of it lives outside the digital realm: Business cards, handouts, receipts. People always have a collection of paper that accompanies their PC because it is hard to include that stuff in their digital storage. Beyond paper, there are other analog forms of information such as speeches (audio) and "performances" (video). You hear and see things today, but all you have are your memories of that, or maybe a recording on tape or mini-recorder. As you know from the current release of OneNote, there's a lot of value in just being able to capture various kinds of information in one place: text, HTML, ink, photos, audio/video recordings. In OneNote "12", we're going to go even farther.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The PC and Tablet PC - central 10 years from now?

Bill Gates had this to say in response to Todd Bishop’s question about whether the pc will be as central to the pc industry 10 years from now as it is today

"The full-screen device will always play a special role. If you want to write a document, edit a document, you're going to sit at two feet and do that. That's the PC, and the PC is where you're able to take notes. This is the Tablet, I don't know if you've seen this Motion machine. [Gestures to a Motion Computing Tablet PC.] Just think of that two years from now, four years from now, in terms of the thinness, the cost. Every student, instead of having textbooks, they're going to have a Tablet PC, and so the PC is very significant.

Powerbook 1.5ghz, 2gb of ram for sale

Comes with the student / teacher edition of Office for the Mac and iWork and an extra ac adapter.I’ve had it for about 6 months. Other than a slight ding on the outside of the laptop case, its’ in fantastic shape.

Need to sell quick

I learned alot about the mac and how to integrate into a windows network. I just no longer have a need for it.

Today we've been talking about Office12 at the PDC (Professional Developer's Conference) in L.A. There are blogs going up about Office12 from some of the people on the team (see for example Jensen Harris ). BillG's keynote is also up - the first 30-40min covers Office 12 and Vista - good stuff. One of the obvious changes that people are talking about is the new UI. Julie Larson-Green, the Group Program Manager for the Office User Experience (UEX) team does aninterview here. She's also on Channel 9.One of the things some people are going to be confused by is that not all the applications in Office 12 have this "new UI". Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and parts of Outlook have it. The others do not, including OneNote. How can this be? Naturally, your first reaction to hearing this will be determined by your built-in bias. If you like the new UI, you'll be disappointed. If you fear the new UI, you will be happy. If you hate "M$", you will talk about how we are just stupid. If you respect "Microsoft", then you'll be searching for understanding. For the real explanation about the new UI, you should look at the links above.

But the explanation for OneNote goes something like this. The main driving force for the new UI was to improve the "authoring" experience. The whole design of the UI (especially the "galleries" to quickly apply complex formatting) is optimized for applications that build richly formatted output. These applications also happen to have oodles of features which were getting buried in the previous UI metaphor of menus and toolbars. People were complaining they couldn't get value out of all the capability in the product. A menu and toolbar approach can display 50-100 commands without difficulty. Word has 1500+ commands. Something had to be done.

TabBlogger : Touching is Good (finale?)

Well, for those of you who have kept up with this series of posts, I've been dropping hints as to our newest announcement.It is being announced at PDC05 that OEMs will be allowed to ship Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (aka Lonestar) on their touch-enabled tablets. Why is this significant? Because a lot of our user audience (and some potential users) have asked for touch input for a while now. Why has it taken til now to get this done? *shrug* I don't know.What I do know is this: don't think that all touch input is created equally. On top of that, touch input is not nearly as precise as pen input, so it'll take you some time to get used to the coarseness of the input. We generally treat the touch digitizer like an additional mouse, so you can ink with it, but again, with the lack of precision and lower sampling rates of mice, I think you'll quickly appreciate what pen input really means to the Tablet experience.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Engadgets' readers Sound off on the 7 versions of Vista.

Check out Engadget for some feedback on the 7 different versions of Vista.

My personal opinion: 7 different versions is going to become an IT Support nightmare for me. From a business stand point, 4 different versions of vista that could show up on a clients desk makes me shudder.

I predict Home Premium and Ultimate will be the top sellers.

I'm really glad to see tablet rolled in to Premium on up, but 7 versions of an Os?

First impressions: IBM X41 Tablet PC

Here is an honest appraisal from Reiter on his first couple of weeks with the x41 tablet PC. He's got some issues w its recognition, the keyboard, the hard drive speed, and software

I’ve been a big fan of Tablet PCs — the concept, at least — and when IBM/Lenovo announced its version, I decided it was time to stop obsessing and order one. After reading all the reviews I had a very good idea of what to expect.I was prepared to love the X41. I wanted to love it. But that is not to be..…at least not so far

I'm currently in the plane en route for the PDC. I just spent 15 minutes trying to write my first PDC blog entry using Ink Recognition on Xceed's TabletPC. I must admit I'm not ready for this. I made many mistakes while writing, and trying to fix those errors made me only more bitter about the technology. On the other side, I'm currently writing with very little room for my arms since the guy in front of me decided to lay down and moved his seat back. Planes are not for laptops nor tablet PCs. Sure, I would have more room in first class, but I can't afford it.

I had the most surprising experience yesterday. I was at a family get-together when my sisters and I started an ad hoc planning session on a pending legal action. Of course I took my tablet from the car to use for notetaking and web research.

As we were breaking up I noticed that my 4 year old niece was getting bored with all the adult activity. So, rather than pack up the tablet, I loaded the Ink Art tool from the MS experience pack, and gave Baylee a Once through in how to select tools, colors etc. and let her have at it.

She took to it like a fish to water, producing picture after picture (typical 4 year old drawings-I'm not trying to portray her as an artistic prodigy) Stopping only once to ash why the paintbrush kept running out.

I know for a fact that was the first time she had ever seen a tablet, and all she hod seen me do earlier is write in One Note. I am still surprised at how intuitive she found the tablet to be. I know sheens eye I it, her last words to me that day were "Uncle Steve, next time you come over bring your toy."

shahine.com/omar/ - No longer a tablet owner

It’s kind of sad, but I’m no longer a Tablet PC Owner. I had a Toshiba Potege 3500 and then a Toshiba M200 for the past 3 years. I truly believe in the tablet platform, but not in convertible notebook designs. I ended up getting a regular old non-sexy boring looking laptop and I could not be happier (well I have some problems I need to blog about later).

TabBlogger : Don't give up on us baby, who-o-oa

Hilton wants to know why folks are dumping their tablets, in light of Omar choosing to dump his.

Readers: If you've read this far, you are a dedicated Tablet person. If you've ever dumped a Tablet, or if you've never bought one, why? The Tablet OEMs do listen to feedback from us on the team, and any feedback you give now is likely to still be considered for the Vista wave of Tablets.

My favorite blog

Why? I really appreciate how he shows how the tablet pc is such an integral part of his work flow and how it impacts everything he does day to day. Heck, if you can’t be productive using a piece of technology, why use it, right? He’s also honest in its’ drawbacks and won’t shy away from calling a spade a spade.

Warner has also been a major contributor to www.tabletpcbuzz.com – helping users solve problems and become productive with their tablet pc’s. He’s one of the pillars of our online community.

I really look forward to meeting Warner face to face one of these days.

MikeWo's Musings : LS800 Review

I had previously mentioned that I wanted to purchase a LS800 tablet…..well, my willpower is very week (and my wife is very kind) and so I've had one now for about three weeks. So far I'm pretty happy with it. I thought I'd provide a nice summation of my thoughts on the device. This is pretty long.

eBay buys Skype - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Yup, it’s happened: eBay just bought Skype. The price? An astoundingly ridiculous $1.3 billion in cash and 32.4 million shares of eBay stock for a company which expects to make only $60 million dollars this year.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

The Tablet PC Show #23 with Tracy Hooten

Marc and I had a fun conversation with Tracy Hooten, the driving force behind The Student Tablet PC blog. The Student Tablet PC blog is a wonderful source of information for students using Tablet PCs but non-students can find a wealth of information, too. Tracy tells us how she likes her new Toshiba M200 with the wide-angle high resolution screen and other topics related to her usage of the Tablet at school. We talk about scanning textbooks and other large works into the Tablet and Tracy gives us some insight into the new beta version of PDF Annotator.

ink in excel

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Picked this up from the 'buzz as well. Paul Thurrot post some very good information here concerning the breakout of all the Vista products. Looks like Tablet PC functionality will be built in to all the editions from Home Premium Edition on on up. Some must reading over at Paul Thurrot's site:

Exclusive: Windows Vista Product Editions Revealed: "According to internal Microsoft documentation, the goal of the product edition differentiations in Windows Vista is to provide 'clear value proposition' to all customer segments and take XP-era innovations, such as the Media Center and Tablet PC functionality, to the mainstream. "

WIPTE 2006

Picked this up from the 'Buzz.

The First Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education April 6 - 7, 2006

The First Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education will be held on the Purdue University campus in West Lafayette, Indiana on April 6 and 7, 2006. WIPTE is free and open to anyone with an interest in instructional technology. A wide variety of disciplines are embracing Tablet PC's and similar pen-based devices as tools for the radical enhancement of teaching and learning. This conference is intended to leverage this shared passion and to identify best practices in the educational use of pen-based computing so that all educators may benefit from this next generation of technology.

Bill Gates - A short chat with Microsoft's Chief Software Architect

LE1600 Update

I’m still feeling like the LE1600 was a great purchase – with one exception – the convertible keyboard.

I’ve been through two keyboards with the pin in the hinge breaking on each one. I’ve heard of other reports where the keyboard is coming with the hinge not working correctly, but gets corrected when they call tech support.

While I’ve been waiting on my third keyboard, I’ve learned how reliant I am upon it when not at my desk. I do a lot of programming at night while either in a recliner or in bed. Without that convertible keyboard, I’m hosed. There is no way I could function with a slate only tablet if I didn’t have that convertible keyboard. The stowaway keyboard is nice, but without something flat to lay it on and without easy access to the number keys, it is really handicapping.

Which drives me to my main point: If I can’t get this convertible keyboard stabilized without any further breakages, I’m going to have to consider selling this whole setup for a convertible tablet. Motion’s tech support has been fabulous and I want to do my part with helping them get through this, but I gotta have a reliable full-size keyboard when I’m away from my desk.

Chip shortage forces tablet PC delay | News.blog | CNET News.com

An apparent shortage of Intel chips has caused tablet PC maker Motion Computing to modify its orders for September.

According to an internal memo seen by CNET News.com, Motion's marketing department got word from Intel that there is a world-wide shortage of the Intel Pentium M Processor number 758 which is a low-voltage chip running at 1.5GHz.

"What this means is that existing orders of the Motion LE1600 tablet PC are now scheduled to ship during the first week of October. The current expected ship date for new LE1600 orders is the second week of October," the memo said, noting that Motion was also exploring other alternatives to fill orders.

A representative with Motion Computing confirmed the company's attempts to modify its sales techniques including suggesting Motion Computing's LS800s, which include Intel's 1.2 GHz ultra-low voltage processor--a chip that is not experiencing a delay-- and Motion's LE1600 with an Intel Celeron processor.

jkOnTheRun: One Tablet PC rebuilt

Setting up your OneNote notebook

Chris Pratley talks about and links to examples on how to organize One Note. His also soliciting some feedback.

A discussion I had today reminded me of a design conundrum we went through with OneNote when we were preparing it for first release. A guy I was talking to today said that he thought (for his web site storage product) it would be lame to put example folders on the site to try to show how to use it, since nearly everyone would actually want something different and unique to themselves. So he wanted to go with a generic, empty space and help text right there to explain that you can make folders as needed to suit your organizational needs.

Monster Hit - Big Head Todd tests the newest HP Tablet PC

Sep. 2005 -- When HP provided Todd Park Mohr with an HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC to test, we figured he'd find some creative uses for it. In addition to leading the Colorado-based band Big Head Todd and the Monsters (BHTM), Mohr is an artist and veteran road warrior. He also knows his way around technology.

Music is Mohr's first love. He and bandmates Rob Squires and Brian Nevin have toured yearly since 1988, playing 3,500 shows and sharing the bill with other artists including Sheryl Crow, the Eagles and the Dave Matthews Band. Recently, the band wrote and recorded "Blue Sky," recognized as the theme song of the space shuttle Discovery mission that marked the U.S. space program's return to flight.

CNN.com - 'A scene of anarchy' - Sep 1, 2005

We spent the last few hours at the New Orleans Convention Center. There are thousands of people lying in the street.

We saw mothers holding babies, some of them just three, four and five months old, living in horrible conditions. Diapers littered the ground. Feces were on the ground. Sewage was spilled all around.

These people are being forced to live like animals. When you look at the mothers, your heart just breaks.

Some of the images we have gathered are very, very graphic.

We saw dead bodies. People are dying at the center and there is no one to get them. We saw a grandmother in a wheelchair pushed up to the wall and covered with a sheet. Right next to her was another dead body wrapped in a white sheet.

TabBlogger : Touching is Good

I don't see any publicly available info yet (my lead PM had sworn us to secrecy til Sept 1 - which it is now, Redmond time). I wonder what I can say without getting Dooced. I'd better not chance it, since I'm already taking a ton of heat career-wise for not being a coder.